Taking pretty direct cues from Harrell’s ideas of locality and expanding student perceptions of community, I’ve been thinking a lot about these Other Communities at Haverford: college staff and faculty members, and lately Suburban Square.

At Suburban Square there’s a Farmers’ Market right next to Trader Joe’s that seems to simultaneously legitimize and expose these absurd suburban elite grocery stores. If you buy into their branding they seem redundant, but their basic products are radically different. Trader Joe’s, it’s natural it’s organic it’s frozen and it’s really cheap. I’m talking about packaged vs unpackaged food, they’re not the same at all.

There’s something about the uniforms even: Trader Joe’s has those awkward Hawaiian shirts and then there’s the Pennsylvania Dutch next door. The product is already the gimmick, it’s weird they need to sell it on top of selling it.